We all seek sporadic refuge in daydreams – and in this bleak and icy back-to-work early January week, who isn’t spending a little more time than usual in the comforting mental company of a lovingly nurtured fantasy life? Yet what if our most private inner world was suddenly let loose into the public domain to interact with and disrupt our everyday reality? The dream might quite swiftly morph into nightmare.
Such is the beguiling premise of Woman in Mind (1985), one of Alan Ayckbourn’s most highly regarded dramas, in which bored and unloved middle-aged vicar’s wife Susan sustains a “knock to the head” and starts to merge the real and the imagined. Since the play premiered four decades ago, public discussion of mental health and depression, not to mention perimenopause, has blossomed, which should lend this revival additional resonance and clout. Frustratingly it doesn’t, quite.
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The ever-reliable – and from a theatre producer’s point of view, ever bankable – Sheridan Smith stars as Susan, a sharp, witty and frustrated woman whose marriage to Gerald (Tim McMullan) has descended into the humdrum as he works endlessly writing a dreary history book. Susan’s grimly frowning sister-in-law Muriel (Louise Brealey) lives with them and she hasn’t seen her adult son for more than two years.
No wonder Susan has constructed a rich and satisfying imaginary family, all of whom – including vivacious daughter Lucy (Safia Oakley-Green) – are utterly and vocally devoted to her as they live their gently opulent anyone-for-tennis life, complete with abundant glasses of champagne.
Romesh Ranganathan and Sheridan Smith in Woman in Mind (Photo: Marc Brenner)Susan is our unreliable narrator and the only character onstage throughout in Michael Longhurst’s elegant production, and Smith is very good without being great. She doesn’t let rip in the way we know that she can, to explore the full bleak extent of Susan’s emptiness and despair. Too often, Smith seeks easy recourse to a nervous laugh at the end of a sentence, instead of allowing the unvarnished words their full and unsettling impact.
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Comedian Romesh Ranganathan makes his stage debut as bumbling doctor Bill, who tends to Susan after her initial accident. It’s a decent enough first dramatic outing for Ranganathan, although when Bill fiddles nervously with his glasses for what feels like the 400th time I had certainly had enough.
The play somewhat outstays its welcome, taking far too long to wind up for its finale. Yet Longhurst’s directorial flair is amply visible at the start, as the stage safety curtain (decorated with the plentiful flowers of Susan’s extensive imaginary garden) hovers uncertainly between up and down, only lifting fully after half an hour. It’s a gloriously crafty way of reinforcing the idea of a liminal state between two worlds, as Susan struggles to commit to another day of grinding mundanity.
To 28 February, then touring to Sunderland and Glasgow (womaninmindplay.com)
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